Bayonne port project wins $11.4 million in federal grants

BAYONNE — Fewer trucks on the road, less pollution and more cargo — moving more quickly — through the seaports.

Those are the aims of a port project that won $11.4 million from the Obama administration on Friday and was the only New Jersey recipient of more than $500 million in federal economic recovery money doled out to more than 47 transportation projects nationwide.

The South Hudson Intermodal Facility, a $125 million project expected to be completed by 2014, will more than double the capacity of a port terminal in Bayonne that is a major way station for everything from clothes to chemicals. It will also create 50 permanent jobs, federal officials said.

The facility will allow the transfer of cargo directly from ships to rail lines. Currently, containers that arrive at the terminal in Bayonne are moved by trucks to a rail yard in Elizabeth. The trucks emit diesel fumes and contribute to traffic congestion, federal officials said. The federal grant will be used to install rail infrastructure and two new cranes at the site, leased from the Port Authority by the company, Global Container Terminals.

“This is going to help us continue to be the mega-port of the East Coast,” said U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who was joined by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and other congressional officials from New Jersey. Of the 47 transportation projects that won the competitive grants on Friday, LaHood visited recipients in Bayonne and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where federal money will help with a new streetcar system.

LaHood said the Bayonne project would ease congestion and encourage more maritime shipping.

“What’s happening is our roads are clogged,” he said. “The things that are not clogged are our waterways.”

The facility in Bayonne is the only marine terminal east of the Bayonne Bridge that can accommodate a new generation of larger ships, called Panamax, that are expected to become more common after the widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014. Those ships will not be able to access the region’s largest marine terminals in Port Newark for years because the Bayonne Bridge is too low.

The Bayonne Bridge will be raised—a more than $1 billion project—but that will not be completed until 2016 at the earliest.

“In the next couple of years this project will be critical because it will be finished well before the Bayonne Bridge,” Menendez said.

The Port Authority, which operates the region’s ports, is contributing more than $100 million to the intermodal facility, which will be able to handle 250,000 containers per year.